Reviews

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

One of the biggest changes from the first title is the ability to leave your idyllic garden for a jaunt into more severe environments. The pinatas you find thriving in the arid and arctic conditions are pretty much what you'd expect, from camels and scorpions to penguins and yaks. If you want to take them back to your garden, you'll have to trap them and make sure their new home is properly equipped. To this end, the game now features sand and snow packets which allow you to paint the landscape with mini-ecosystems. It's a nice change of pace from the lush, cheery green grass and offers some needed variety.

If you played the first Viva Pinata, you've probably got awful memories of yelling at your TV while a black-and-white Doenut (or Chippopatamus or Roario or...) casually strolled by the enticing treats you laid down. Thankfully, the pinata AI has been greatly improved, so they'll visit often and generally stick around while you set everything up to make them a resident. You've also got the new ability to move the circular icon outside of the garden's boundary to highlight the pinatas that aren't residents yet, and a simple button press tells you precisely what you need to do. Like much of the game, this is a great improvement over digging through endless menus.

One of the most requested features for the new game was most likely the ability to visit another player's garden over Xbox Live. Not only can you do that, it's an effortless experience that has already afforded us some glimpses into the methods of other players. You can open your garden up to friends and strangers alike, setting permissions for each of them. If you want to have a friend working with you to get every pinata in the game, you can allow them to do everything and anything you can do while only letting strangers look and move around. Since you can chat, you can use the time to ask questions or try to finagle a Fizzlebear from them. You can also play same screen co-op, although that limits what your partner can do significantly.

Finally, for those players that just don't have the time to sit back and relax as they gradually fill their gardens with fantastical creatures, there's the playing card system. This allows you to scan a pinata's card with the Xbox Live Vision camera to instantly import them. Are they a cop out? Probably. Does it feel like a marketing grab? Definitely. Are we going to use them? Of course we are! After all, you've got to put dozens of hours into the game to get the high level pinatas, and there are some that you just need to have to feel complete. It's nice to know that there might be kids out there who are tearing into packs of cards in the hopes of finding a mint-condition Tigermisu. Our only qualm is the fact that it can take a while to get the card scanned, as you need to have bright lights and a steady hand.

Even without some of its improvements, Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise would be a solid sequel, but the more user-friendly gameplay, online features, and variety make it better in nearly every way. It may not win over the haters (you know who you are!), but it's definitely worth a look if you're in the market for an entertaining strategy game that just happens to star a bunch of brightly-colored adorable critters. Here's hoping that this won't be the last time we get a taste of thier sweet, sweet candy.